Native Youth Olympics has been growing in recent years, both in Petersburg, and across Alaska. Two coaches from Juneau’s team came to Petersburg last week to show elementary and middle school students what the sport is all about. KFSK’s Hannah Flor joined a 4th and 5th grade gym class and has this story.
Several dozen kids sat in a wobbly line on the floor of Petersburg’s Community Gym. Matthew Quinto introduced himself and Duc Ngo. They were visiting from Juneau, where they coach Native Youth Olympics.
Quinto told the kids, “We’re gonna show you guys some games that have been played here in Alaska for hundreds, if not 1000s of years.”
The two men kicked fist-sized balls suspended in the air by twine. They were demonstrating the one-foot and two-foot high kick. The different high kicks were used by hunters to signal to their community across the tundra.
“And what did one foot mean?” Quinto asked the kids.
“It means an unsuccessful hunt but you’re still safe,” on kids volunteered.
Quinto said the games taught people of the circumpolar north survival skills.
“So when you think about Iñupiat, Yup’ik, Sámi, any of those Indigenous nations up there, the way they had to live, if you had to hop across ice flows, you had to be coordinated with your feet,” he said.
He said the point of the games is to help each other and work on survival and hunting skills.
“Balance is really important on the ice, right? If you don’t want to slip – one hand reach. You need food, you have to go hunting, and so there’s stick pole and arm pull. All those games that we play together, they help us get stronger so that we can help each other survive,” he said.
Some games simulate the pain of frostbite. In one, competitors curl their toes underneath their feet and walk on their toe knuckles. That one isn’t Quinto’s favorite.
“I cannot do [it], I will not do it. It hurts sooooo bad. But it’s to demonstrate how bad it feels when you get your toes frostbitten, right, because sometimes when you’re out there, it’s either warm up your toes, or you’re gonna lose them,” he said.
But not all the games teach hunting and survival skills. Quinto said sometimes, they’re just for fun.
“You sit back to back and you literally hook each other’s mouths and pull. It sounds bad, because it’s gross to put a finger in someone’s cheeks. But whoever laughs first, loses. You sit there, and it’s really hard not to laugh when you got someone pulling out your face,” he said.
Petersburg’s Native Youth Olympics team is new. It started just over four years ago as part of an attempt to keep middle school kids active and engaged during the early days of COVID – kids were able to learn and practice the events virtually. The team has been growing steadily. Last year 13 middle schoolers from Petersburg competed at Juneau’s Traditional Games. This year more than twice that number are making the trip.
And the sport has been gaining popularity around the state, and even in the lower 48. Quinto thinks that’s partly because it’s so easy to love. He said people are drawn to the way athletes support each other, prioritizing camaraderie over competition.
He said that approach goes back to the origins of the games, to the need for hunters to be successful.
“Most of these games come from up north in Iñupiat and Yupik area. And back in the day, you didn’t want another hunter to not do well, because that meant their family is going hungry. And that’s not what you wanted. So we would share the best locations to get certain animals and do certain hunts purely because it was for the better of the people,” he said.
He said that focus on the success of the community stayed with the games as they developed throughout the years.
Jaime Cabral coaches Petersburg’s Native Youth Olympics team. He said the collaborative attitude extends to individual athletes competing against one another.
“They will try to help each other get to their highest point, even though they’re competing against one another,” he said. “And so it’s all positive reinforcement from the competitors. And they’re working together, they’re helping each other out. I just never been in an environment like that where everything is super, super supportive.”
He says that while in many sports, a sportsmanship award can feel like a consolation prize for the least skilled team or player, in Native Youth Olympics, sportsmanship is more important than skill.
“We are all here to learn the games that have been passed down from generation to generation with the Native Alaskans. And it’s a privilege for us to be out here doing all these games, for them to share it with us. And so that sportsmanship trophy is huge. It’s more important than the first place trophy,” he said.
It’s more than how an athlete acts when they’re competing, or when they fail. It’s also how much effort they put into supporting their teammates, and their competitors.
“Because everyone’s a teammate there in reality, it’s how they interact throughout the whole entire tournament, how they respect the games, how they respect the elders that are there, how they respect officials, their coaches, other teams, how they handle themselves on and off the competition court,” Cabral said.
And sometimes that sportsmanship hits close to home too. Cabral’s son Tavyn is in 6th grade – it’s his 1st year on the NYO team.
“[I was] watching him try to Alaska high kick, and he’s trying to hit 28 inches and is not getting it. And another teammate goes and helps him and he hits 34. And then just the celebration that they all had in the middle of practice was like the coolest thing. I was tearing up in the corner, because I was just like, ‘Okay, that’s a high school kid helping out my kid, who’s a sixth grader,’” he said.
After two full days of gym classes with the elementary and middle school kids, the Juneau coaches join Cabral and the middle school Native Youth Olympic team in the gym for a community wide event.
Each athlete has a game they’re demonstrating, as people mill around, trying out the events.
Coach Cabral is helping some youngsters with the stick pull. Two kids sit facing each other, feet touching. They’re holding a wooden dowel in a sort of perpendicular tug of war. The game would help hunters train to have the strength to pull a seal out of the water.
“Ready?” he asks. The two kids nod.
“Pull! Oh, go, go, go, go, backwards! Go backwards!” The two kids strain against each other, not moving much.
“Chin up! Chin up!” Cabral yells. The smaller of the two starts to lift off the ground.
“Chest back! Ohhhhhhhhhhh!” The smaller kid topples over, losing the round.
After everyone gets a chance to try the games around the gym, folks file into the stands to watch the middle schoolers show off their skills.
8th grader Brody Whitethorn steps up for the Alaskan high kick. She starts out sitting down, the sole of her right foot on the floor, her right hand holding her left foot. Her left hand is behind her, palm to the floor. She looks up at a ball, suspended a good four feet above her. “I want it higher,” she tells Cabral. He raises the ball.
She pauses. Then, she pushes off with her right foot, kicking it up into the air toward the ball. For a moment, her body is balanced on that left hand, the palm still on the floor.
Her right foot connects with the ball.
Her teammates, and those watching in the stands, explode into cheers.
